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Old 05-06-2008, 02:22 PM   #53
DonMagee
Location: Indiana
Join Date: May 2006
Posts: 1,311
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Re: What is "combat"?

Quote:
Kit Leblanc wrote: View Post
Not quite sure what you mean, Don - officers in responding to domestics, or the dynamics of DV altercations?

We've discussed here before (somewhere...) that the rough numbers for "civilian" encounters, based just on a snapshot in my experience but no real data, are probably not so high for fights going to ground, but still significant enough to be a major concern in terms of self defense simply because the danger increases exponentially once you go down in an uncontrolled environment.

DV is probably the same, though due to where such encounters occur and size/strength disparities women in DV frequently report being pushed/thrown down onto the floor, onto couches, beds, seats in cars, etc.

All of these are more "ground fighting" problems than they are standing problems.But I don't know of anyone who has done a formal study documenting where civilian encounters occurred, particularly not DV encounters.

When it becomes "combat" is obviously also another discussion. We have to remember too that definition and what you do may change radically based on the environment.

Military battlefield? Military "operations other than war?" Single operator/soldier/officer or team environment? Side of the road traffic stop gone bad? High risk entry with team? Routine pat down that suddenly turns into lethal assault? Foot chase followed by hand to hand fight? And so on...

There are s**t-hot SWAT cops/military operators, military and LE combat vets, who "rule" in a guns up, team centered, tactical environment but are fish out of water when dealing alone with a single, motivated bad guy who manages to close with them, let alone take them down and get on top.

One of the things I have tried to impress on our tactical guys was not to be so wedded to solving all their problems at the point of gun - because tactics can fail, bullets don't always hit, and don't always stop a guy when they do, and you may not be in position to use the gun to solve it to begin with.

Little consolation in being some "elite" shooter/tactical operator if you can't fight your way out of a paper bag hand-to-hand. A fellow trainer and former SWAT guy recently said something to me that made a lot of sense: working in a team environment often covers up for lack of individual skills.

All over the place, I know, but the thread is about defining something that is hard to really define. Maybe its like "obscenity." We know its "combat" when we are in it!!
I'd just like to see a report that breaks down physical violence used in domestic violence cases. Like the number of men who attack women vs women who attack men, the kind of attacks most used (striking, restraint, weapons, verbal, etc). Just from a intellectual standpoint.

- Don
"If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough" - Albert Einstein
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